Well i've been going for about two months now. Mike was right when he said if you want to go faster GO FASTER and if you want to go further GO FURTHER. Such a simnple statement but very true.

Anyways, I thought it was time to post my log and see if it means anything to you guys (advice?). I have'nt tracked weight lossi in the log but i've lost baout 10kgs over the time i've been riding. (about 1kgh a week) just trying to eat sensibly (some pizza/some salad etc.)

-Learning how to keep up the momentum over hills and around corners
-Pushing the mental barriers and realising you are capable of greater output

I find loops hard (re-riding the same route multiple times in one session) as my brain gives in and wusses out and tells me to go home. Can't wait till they have the m7 fixed so I don;t have to loop. Or maybe I might get game a try a freeway one of these days.

gururug wrote:-Pushing the mental barriers and realising you are capable of greater output

That's the one I'm working on at the moment.

Our main race circuit has an utter prick of a hill in it (40m up over about 400m) and last week on the first lap I approached it and thought it didn't really look that bad. After that attitude adjustment I was second over the hill each of the 5 laps, beaten only by a 14 Y. O.

It's hard to explain but I'm doing some hard work on the bike and really starting to enjoy the hard work.
Either I'm getting fitter or my body is realising it can do what my brain is telling it to do, just like in the good old days when I about 20 Y. O.

Something that makes me wonder about this, is the effect group riding has. Its' not something I do (none of the racers can stay with me on my tourer ) but considering the comments that have been made about the effects of riding in a group (eg, ave speed going up by 5 km/hr or more), I think that this should be noted as well, or the two sets of figures kept seperate. It's easy to say "gee, I'm faster than last week over the same track" when you did it solo last week and with a group of thirty this week, but the comparison doesn't really mean anything.

Chasing down is fair enough. Riding with someone else probably is too - in both cases, the time is largely a result of your own efforts. But once you're into a larger group, the numbers could appear distorted, depending on how you use them.

Personally, I'm countering this with my test loop. The idea is that I'll do in on the same bike (the Europa - this removes the bike from the equation), the fixie chosen because that means that it's all my own effort. The ride has a mix of climbs and a bit of flat so it tests the range of riding skills (except efficient gear use because it's a fixie). It should give me a good idea of how I'm improving, both by ave speed, HR readings (a drop in HR for instance would suggest that I'm getting fitter and stronger even if the ave speed doesn't change much).

Originally I had a 5km test loop with a very nasty climb in it - I reckon that's too short and you'd have to warm up before attempting it. The climb was scary too. The new, longer loop, now 12km, allows me to warm up on the ride. Actually, if I don't warm up properly, I will die on that loop, especially because the final bit is a steady but relatively gentle uphill run - a proper warm up will show in my times. So this loop tests warming up, flat running, steep and shallow climbs, fast downhill (I couldn't even attempt full speed last trip - all I wanted to do was rest which you can't on a fixie). The traffic's not too bad either outside of peak traffic. It should give me a good feel for improvement and allows me to scatter my riding efforts across the spectrum on my other rides.

I've got a web based php script linked to a database that I wrote that is an actual spreadsheet. I could change the headers on the columns and I then have a cycling log I can access anywhere from any PC.

You can convert a traditional spreadsheet into formated plain text that will display as in columns in a post like this;
1. use the Code command to provide a mono space font
2. detemine the maximum column widths
3. combine the text in the column with leading or trailing dots. Change the colour of the dots to white to make them less noticable
4. merge the rows
5. copy the generated outcome and past into a forum post.

example for a different forum wrote:=CONCATENATE(D32,LEFT(#REF!,30),"[COLOR=""White""]",(LEFT("..............................",30-LEN(#REF!))),"[/COLOR]",LEFT(#REF!,10),"[COLOR=""White""]",(LEFT("...................",10-LEN(#REF!))),"[/COLOR]",LEFT(#REF!,4),"[COLOR=""White""]",(LEFT("...................",4-LEN(#REF!))),"[/COLOR]",LEFT(#REF!,4),"[COLOR=""White""]",(LEFT("...................",4-LEN(#REF!))),"[/COLOR]",LEFT(A32,5),"[COLOR=""White""]",(LEFT("...................",4-LEN(A32))),"[/COLOR]",B32,E32)